Fire at Home for Elderly Kills Three in Stamford

By GEORGE JUDSON

Published: February 12, 1996

STAMFORD, Conn., Feb. 11—
An intense fire burning along a hallway in an assisted-care home for the elderly killed three residents Saturday, but fireproof doors and the residents' emergency training prevented more deaths, fire officials said today.

The fire in a wing of the Courtland Gardens Residence killed a man in whose apartment the blaze started, and a woman who tried to escape down the hallway instead of staying in her room, the officials said.

Other residents on the top floor of the three-story building's north wing, where the fire began and was contained, followed instructions and stayed in their rooms, opening windows for air, until the fire was suppressed. But nine people suffering from smoke inhalation were admitted to area hospitals on Saturday.

One of those admitted died at Norwalk Hospital today, and another remained in critical condition at St. Joseph's Medical Center.

Officials did not release the names of those killed or injured.

"The firefighters who made their way down the hallway were facing unbelievable conditions," the Stamford Fire Chief, Ron Graner, said. "But we knew we had no possibility of the fire extending into the rooms as long as the doors were closed."

Fire officials said that the 24-year-old wing had only one sprinkler, at the end of the hallway where it connects to an addition built in 1988, but that it helped prevent the fire from spreading to other parts of the building.

Though the newer section does have sprinklers, and Chief Graner said sprinklers "absolutely would have helped," Connecticut law does not require them in elderly-housing complexes of less than four stories. The older wing did have working smoke alarms, officials said.

While Courtland Gardens provides nursing care in a separate building, the building where the fire occurred is not a nursing home. Instead, for monthly rents from $2,695 to $5,600, its 110 residents have their own apartments and receive meals, laundry, housekeeping and transportation.

Robert Lehn, a Deputy Fire Chief, said the original wing was classified as a "fire-resistant" building, built of brick, with metal walls for partitions; only people who can walk on their own are allowed to live there.

"Basically, what burned was the contents of the building," he said.

Chief Graner said the fire, reported at 4:52 P.M., appeared to have started accidentally, near a sofa in one apartment, though the exact cause was not yet known.

The man who lived in the apartment tried to escape, he said, but collapsed in his doorway. His body prevented the fire-proof door from closing and let the flames escape into the hallway, which quickly filled with dense smoke and intense heat.

The woman who died was found huddled in one corner of her bathroom, the chief said, with a flashlight in one hand and a damp towel in the other. From smoke marks on her door, he said, it was evident that she had opened the door to run to a nearby stairway and was met by a wall of heat and smoke.

Slamming the door, she kept out any more smoke, Chief Graner said. But probably disoriented from the blast of heat, he said, the woman, instead of opening a window, retreated into the first room she encountered, her bathroom, and shut herself in.

"Her fatal mistake was opening her door in the first place" and exposing her lungs to the heat and smoke, he said.

As firefighters in full protective gear fought their way down the hallway to the fire's source, others outside put ladders up to the third-floor windows to communicate with residents, and in one case to administer oxygen, until the hallway was clear.

Before firefighters arrived, people from the surrounding neighborhood helped the home's staff guide dozens of residents out the building, despite the increasing smoke.

"They say you wouldn't run into a burning building," said one volunteer, Michael Marsula, who lives across Courtland Avenue from the complex, "but there were a lot of people running in there."

Forty-two residents were moved from the wing to other apartments in the building, other residences for the elderly or to family homes.

Photo: The blaze on Saturday was contained to the Courtland Gardensnorth wing, where residents must be able to walk on their own. (Carl David LaBianca for The New York Times)